BUSINESS ABROAD: The Silk King

The best-known American in the
picturesque kingdom of Thailand is a greying, well-tanned onetime
architect named James H. W. Thompson, 52, who has almost singlehanded
saved Thailand's vital silk industry from extinction. When Jim Thompson
arrived in Thailand in 1945 as an OSS officer (and stayed on as
political adviser to the American minister), silk weaving as a local
industry had almost died under the onslaught of cheaper and more
durable machine-made silk. Today, almost every ship or plane that
leaves Thailand carries Thai silk to some 17 countries, and Thompson's
Thai Silk Co. alone employs more than 2,000...